


irregular resolution

by lady_peony



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Fluff, Future Fic, Light Angst, M/M, Persona 5: The Royal Spoilers, Post-Canon, Unresolved Sexual Tension, akechi tries to pine (badly), akira tries to flirt (badly), dream dates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:00:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24721978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_peony/pseuds/lady_peony
Summary: Akira has dreams sometimes;Akira tips back his head, sets it more deeply into the chair behind him. "Stars can move." He brings up a finger, rotates it slowly in the air, one full circle, and another. "Binary star systems. Because there's more than one...their paths change, because the other exists.""So they do," Akechi says. Exhales once, then pushes out a thoughtful-sounding hum between his lips. "To be frank, it is disappointing that the stars here, no matter how beautiful, are nothing more than very convincing fakes. Pretty imitations, but nothing more."
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 34
Kudos: 242





	irregular resolution

**Author's Note:**

> _And to the forest edge you came one day_   
>  _(This was my dream) and looked and pondered long,_   
>  _But did not enter, though the wish was strong:_   
>  **  
>  ["A Dream Pang" - Robert Frost](https://poets.org/poem/dream-pang)   
>  **   
>    
>  _"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender._
> 
> _"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."_
> 
> _"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit._
> 
> _"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."_
> 
> _"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"_
> 
> _"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept."_
> 
> **\- The Velveteen Rabbit**

  
i.

Akira opens his eyes.

This isn't the Velvet Room.

The seat beneath him is far too comfortable for one. The room is blue, admittedly, but instead of bars, what he sees are swathes of stars gently revolving across the ceiling, jewel-bright against an inky sky, brighter than any he's seen in Tokyo.

Somewhere in the dark, the calming cadence of the guide's voice carries on, going on about trajectories and luminosity, the Geminids and Leonids.

"People used to believe in many things that shaped their destinies," another voice says, this one much closer to Akira. "Animal bones, cast into a fire. The sighting of a certain species of bird. The stars."

Akira doesn't need to turn his head to recognize that voice. 

He flicks his eyes down to his hand, resting on the armrest. The starry sky overhead paints the top of his knuckles with whispers of sapphire. The arm next to it on the right belongs to— 

"Is it crueler or kinder to believe something outside of ourselves determines our fate, something that shines so much brighter than ourselves? Well, Kurusu?"

_Don't look._

_If he dares to look, won't the person besides him simply disapp—_

Akira tips back his head, sets it more deeply into the chair behind him. "Stars can move." He brings up a finger, rotates it slowly in the air, one full circle, and another. "Binary star systems. Because there's more than one...their paths change, because the other exists."

"So they do," Akechi says. Exhales once, then pushes out a thoughtful-sounding hum between his lips. "To be frank, it is disappointing that the stars here, no matter how beautiful, are nothing more than very convincing fakes. Pretty imitations, but nothing more."

Akira clears his throat. "There's a village around the Nagano Prefecture that has a star viewing party every year. We could—"

_We could go some time._

What a silly thought. What use was an invitation extended in a dream?

A snort from his right. Not the gentle laugh that Akira had been half-expecting, but something more darkly amused.

"I don't think I'll be free to do as I wish for some time," Akechi says. "Strange. I haven't wanted to go anywhere for a while, but if you're asking, I..." 

"I can ask you again," Akira says. "At a later date."

"And if my answer was still fated to be 'no'? Didn't you know?" Akechi says, and Akira can imagine the ironic smile that he's wearing in the dark. "Fate is heartless. Once, a rich boy asked a deity of marriage who he was fated to marry, imagining it was someone both powerful and beautiful. The deity pointed at a thread on his finger, which lead to a girl in shabby clothing who was walking with a blind old woman in the market. The boy was so angered, he ordered a servant to kill the girl with a knife and went back to his house. What do you suppose happened?"

"They met again, I suppose."

"Of course. On the day of his wedding, he was pleased that his bride was from a family of the right wealth and status to match him. On top of that, she was good of heart and fair of face, save for a silk flower she wore over her forehead. After the ceremony, when the groom asked why she wore a flower, she cried. She said that in her youth, someone had killed her blind nanny and tried to kill her in the market. She survived and was adopted by a rich family, carrying only that scar as a reminder from that day. The groom was so shocked at hearing this that he dropped to his knees and confessed what he remembered. He begged her forgiveness."

"And then?"

"What do you think? She forgave him, so the tale goes. Isn't that a good joke? Isn't that _cruel_? Every day when she looks at her husband, she'll remember that the man next to her had once wished for her death." 

Akira presses his lips together. "It's...sad," he says. "But I don't think the ending was a joke."

"What exactly do you mean by that?"

"He told her the truth, instead of hiding it in the dark. And she—she knew who he was, and decided to stay, anyways. They have the rest of their lives to figure it out."

"The rest of their lives, hm?" Shifting sounds then, cloth moving over vinyl.

Akira's cushion creaks under him. A presence and heat, bracketing Akira's legs.

Akechi's breath, warm and palpable, whispers lightly, lightly over his face. His right knee is half-sunken into Akira's seat, just touching the side of Akira's left thigh. His hands have reached out to clasp around the far ends of Akira's armrests, resting some of his weight on his arms.

Projected stars dip and skate over Akechi's skin, gilding the ends of his hair, the side of his jaw with a royal blue. 

His eyes also catch the light, all novas and dark fire.

Akira keeps both his hands still, curled around the armrests in his reach.

_He looks real._

"Say, Kurusu," Akechi says, leaning in close, so close, above him. "You haven't looked at me once, while we were in here. Have you gotten sick of seeing me?"

"No," Akira says, watching the curve of Akechi's mouth, that implacable self-contained light in his gaze. "That's not it. But I can't keep you here, if it isn't where you want to be. You said you wanted to walk your own path, didn't you?"

"Was that right," Akechi says, not stating it as a question. His throat moves as he laughs once, quiet and low. "I did say that, didn't I?"

A closer heat. A brush of soft hair, the press of skin on skin. 

Akechi's eyes are closed, his forehead holding still against Akira's.

Akira feels his eyes widen.

Silence, except for a slow exhale of breath, near enough for it to be shared, near enough for Akira to inhale the same air into his own lungs. Silence, except for Akira's own heart behind his ribs, thumping. 

Once. 

Twice. 

Thrice.

Akechi leans back, pulling his forehead away from Akira. His eyes are still closed. 

"Looks like the show's over, Kurusu," he says, and opens his eyes, leans away from Akira's seat to stand on his own feet again. "Until next time."

Akira wakes. 

Puts his hand to his forehead, flattening his bangs under his hand.

That touch—it had felt like a boon. A plea. Both.

His hand lands on the drawer next to him for his phone, a little slower to find it than he normally would be. Right.

He wasn't in Leblanc's attic anymore, but in his hometown. In his old bedroom.

He pushes himself up on his elbows, only half-listens to Morgana's grumbling at being pushed off of Akira's chest.

He still had a little time left before he needed to head out the door. He could fix himself a lunchbox, he thinks, and tucks away the thought of stars and Akechi's voice to the back of his mind to examine later.

During lunch break, Akira slips out of the classroom. He makes his way to a quiet spot by the wall of a cooking classroom, and eats there. The tree in that corner of the building is still shedding the last of its cherry blossom petals, the pink fluttering away to let green buds poke through. 

On his phone, Makoto is requesting suggestions on must-see sights for a planned mountain resort trip with Sae. Ann asks Ryuji about the nuances of a specific physical therapy term that she had heard from Shiho. Futaba is yelling loudly about a news announcement of an upcoming line of Featherman figurines, along with many rows of Ｏ(≧▽≦)Ｏ faces. Sumire has also linked one of her last practice videos to the chat, asking for their impressions about the feel of the performance.

Akira taps out responses for several minutes, before he closes the group chat. 

Hesitates for a second. Then pushes at a few more buttons to form a couple sentences, presses the 'send' button to another one of his contacts.

  
ii.

Akira misses his plant.

Unlike his other personal items, his clothing and posters and Jack Frost doll and Morgana, the plant hadn't been something he could simply pack away and carry with him onto the shinkansen. 

He wonders if Sojiro still waters it. It hadn't grown very quickly even when he gave it the most expensive nutrients, but he had appreciated the friendly look of its leaves when they turned glossy and a green, a tiny bit of growth in a room otherwise surrounded by bustling streets and concrete buildings.

His town has more greenery than Tokyo. It still surprises him a little when he sees it, the waving grasses outside of the train station and the lush ribbon of a mountain range on the horizon, always pushing up against the sky.

Akira opens his eyes.

There's a smell of sun-warmed igusa grass and earth. The feel of a breeze winding sleepily through each stalk and stem and the curls of his hair like a contented cat. Grass blades like silk beneath his fingertips.

He becomes aware of another sound besides the wind in the grass. Gentle and even, easy and steady—breaths of air like slow ripples in water.

"Akechi," Akira says. Turns his neck to tip his head to the right.

"Well," Akechi says, the grass rustling beneath him as he sits up,"this _is_ a nice scene. Rather pastoral, isn't it?"

Akira shifts to parallel Akechi's position as well, raising up his head and spine, his legs still laying out straight before him on the grass.

Akira passes a hand over his hair. Catches a tuft of grass on one fingertip. He breathes in, and parts his lips to whistle out air. Sees it drift to the ground. 

He finds his gaze landing on Akechi again, his eyes drinking in every detail of his face.

No disingenuous smiles here, no projection of princely charm. Nor did he display the striking viciousness of those few months when they had fought Maruki, tempered only by bouts of sanguine smirks and coldly austere anger. 

His look now is something more sedate. More composed, the lines of his expression clean and stark as the surface of polished bone. 

He's wearing the white long-sleeved button up that Akira has seen before, sans sweater vest, and his usual tan slacks. No tie. No suit jacket.

Akechi tips back his head, the sun shifting to sink into the line of his nose, the skin of his throat. His lashes lift, slide into a sideways glance to catch Akira's eye with his own. Deep amber and umbra.

"See something interesting, Kurusu?" 

_You._

"Nothing too unusual," Akira says. He spreads out his palms in the grass, pressing them down on pebbles and roots and crumbles of soil. Funny, for his dreams to have such fine details.

He squints a little, and turns his head to peer into the waves of grass before them. "There's birds there," he says, and raises a hand to point towards them.

_Kut-tuk. Kut-tuk. Kut-tuk._

Soft rustling in the grass. A few bobbing heads in the distance. One of them jumps up, flaps for a couple beats before setting down again.

Green pheasants. 

About five or six of them. They're still a little too far to count them closely, even if Akira could use his Third Eye here.

They're close enough though to make out the characteristic green feathers down the neck and front of the male, the splash of bright red over his face like a mask.

Akira spies a few males in the flock and a couple females with their plumage of speckled brown, like timber dotted with moss.

Some of them peck at the grass, their necks bending and popping up from the ground. Presumably eating insects or scratching for seeds. 

The calls from the pheasants as they feed carry through the air to where the two of them sit. The flock's clucks and chirps are not especially musical, but something about it brings to mind the vivacious chatter at Leblanc that Akira used to hear.

"They look bigger than I thought they would be," Akechi murmurs. "Yakeno no kigisu—"

"—yoru no tsuru," Akira finishes. "What about it?"  
  
_The pheasant in the burning field, and the crane in the evening._

"Supposedly, these birds are so sacrificial that a pheasant mother would run towards their nest even if the whole meadow was ablaze with fire, all for the chance to rescue their chicks. So the people say, anyways."

"Yeah." Akira looks down. Green, green grass, tips turned golden in the light. He can count just one, two blades between the tip of his right pinky and Akechi's left one. "Isn't there anything you would be afraid of losing if your house was burning down?"

"Afraid enough to risk my neck running in after it?" Akechi looks upwards at the sky, his eyelids half-lowered. "Hard to say one way or another that there's anything I care enough for—"

Akechi looks at Akira. He presses his lips together.

Goes quiet.

Ah.

Ok.

This silence—is getting awkward.

"Are you well?" Akira says, and wants to kick himself for asking it. What would a dream version of Akechi know?

That's fine. Just think of it as—as practice, that's all. A practice conversation for when Akira gets to see Akechi again, in his waking hours.

"If this is your dream, Kurusu," Akechi says, tone mildly acerbic, "wouldn't I just simply say something reassuring for you to hear?"

"I wouldn't know. I've had a lot of weird dreams before."

"Oh? Have you?" Akechi rolls up a sleeve past his elbow, inspecting the button at its cuff. "I'm—somewhere fairly safe. Though it's no guarantee it will remain so. Does that satisfy you?"

_Are you still eating convenience store food? What happened to your IDs when you got arrested? Your bank accounts? Your records?_

"And you, Kurusu? Haven't gotten too far over your head into any new troubles, have you?"

"It's been—boring. Without you." 

Akechi arches a brow.

"And—without the others of course. My life isn't a weekly heroic tokusatsu episode, you know. It's not like troubles show up in a conveniently scheduled timeslot."

Akechi waves between Akira and the birds in the distance. "So there have been no recent dramatic rescues then, with you escaping only by the skin of your teeth? Or quests to help every big-eyed woebegone soul with their problems? Saint Akira the martyr," Akechi says, but not maliciously. "Do try not to get yourself burned too badly by this world in the interim." 

"You know I'm far hardier and prettier than a bunch of forest birds, right?"

Akechi sniffs, the sound somehow both dismissive and regal at once. "Hardier, you say. Are you really so eager to test that?"

"Things haven't turned out too badly for me so far." Akira leans back, bends his elbows to let his shoulders and his back press against the grass again. 

Gold now spills across the previously blue sky, shot through with silken strands of violet and pink, a radiant spread of light and color. _The magic hour_ , Yusuke had told them once, when he and Morgana and the rest of the Thieves had gone to Inokashira Park for a picnic.

A familiar face moves in, entirely taking up his earlier view of the sky.

"As for the premise of being prettier..." Akechi begins, his voice low. A fingertip on Akira's brow, the touch of it no heavier than a dandelion seed. It moves up, brushes back a part of Akira's bangs.

Akira's curls spring back to fall once again on his forehead as Akechi draws back his hand.

Akechi is backlit by the sky behind him, gold clinging to the edges of him in luminous strokes. The shadows lie darker upon his face. The look in Akechi's eyes—cautious. Appraising.

He leans down, coming nearer. Nearer still. 

A breath, an exhale, something that's almost a sigh. His lips hover so close to Akira's ear that if Akira turns, he knows they would brush against his cheek.

"Vanity ill becomes you, Kurusu," Akechi says. Pulls back a little, a smirk tugging at his lips.

The smirk dissipates when Akira's hand reaches up, his palm coming to a rest to cradle the left side of Akechi's face.

_Be bold, be bold._

"You can still call me Akira." He tries to keeps his tone mild, matter-of-fact.

Beneath his thumb, Akira can sense the swell and dip of Akechi's pulse, his blood moving quick and alive under skin to loop in and out of his heart.

He half expects Akechi to throw off his hand.

_But not too bold. Lest that your heart's blood should run cold._

Akechi doesn't. 

Akechi doesn't shake him off with irritation, or freeze, or move closer. Just stays where he is. 

Akechi closes his eyes. A tenseness in his jaw, under Akira's hand. The cast of his face is somehow both bitter and plaintive. 

_What's with that look, Akechi? Tell me._

"Okay," Akechi says, and opens his eyes. "Akira." Akechi's left hand rises, closes lightly over Akira's right wrist. "We really shouldn't keep meeting like this."

A tug, and Akira's hand falls. Akechi Goro's hand on top of his. 

Akira curls in his fingers. 

Wrist to wrist. Palm to palm. There was a line about this, somewhere.

"Why not?" Akira says. "If it's just a dream, then...this is fine, isn't it?"

"A dream, yes," Akechi echoes. Squeezes Akira's hand once. Slides his fingers from Akira's grasp. "One that has to end upon waking. For you and for me."

On the way to school the next day, Akira glances down at his right hand. Wonders if the heat he had felt then still lingered, somehow. 

He stops by a field for a moment when he hears birdcalls over the sound of slow-trickling water. He only sees a long-necked white bird—an egret?—calmly watching him by the riverside. A few other birds whose names he doesn't know—their feathers olive brown to pale blue-gray —sway on the electric wires that run parallel to the river.

That week, Akira gets punched and receives a love confession.

Not from the same person, no.

The first incident happens near the school's baseball field. Two older boys, and one younger one that looked small enough to be a first year. Loud voices. A fearful face, the tense posture of someone bracing themselves for a fight that they knew they could not win. Akira had managed to grab onto one of the bats an older boy had swung, and flip it out of their hands. He had pushed the younger one out of the way of a fist, but didn't move fast enough to dodge it himself.

When a homeroom teacher finally made their way over to the field, Akira had held his head high, unsure of what he should say.

The first-year he had defended spoke up. Said Akira had only stepped in to try to calm things down between all of them, that he had no skin involved in the fight in the first place. 

Their teacher had sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. Told Akira he was lucky that his Shujin teacher had written a strong recommendation of his classwork, and that the first-year boy had vouched for him. They would all need to be reprimanded by the principal of course, but she didn't think his punishment would be too extreme. Really, Akira-san, shouldn't you be more worried about your university exams in this last year instead of getting into scuffles?

Two days later, a second-year girl had asked to speak to Akira alone by the back of the school. She had introduced herself as Akagawa-san, her dark French braid slipping over one shoulder as she bowed. 

Her looks leaned more towards that of a classic beauty than a cute one—large eyes with a keen edge in them, a quiet gracefulness in her movements. 

She was planning to study to become a veterinarian specializing in wildlife species, or maybe an ecologist. She liked listening to Risette albums and watching travel shows. She said she had heard from the first-year boy, who was her next door neighbor, how Akira-senpai had helped him, and she ended up admiring senpai very much. Would he please consider going out with her?

Akira had to refuse her.

He had complimented her guts on asking him out, but he turned her down still.

"Is there someone else?" Akagawa-san had said, a hand moving up to push back her braid. "Someone else that already holds senpai's feelings?"

 _I had been asked out by a girl before_ , a voice echoes, the words lazy and at ease over the crooning of a jazz singer. _I had to turn them down of course._

"To be honest, there is...someone I'm waiting for," Akira says. "Sorry."

Akagawa-san had only smiled, and thanked him for hearing her out. Walked away from him to a hallway back down to her classroom. 

In bed that night, he taps out another message on his phone. 

Hovers a thumb over the 'send' button. Finally, decides—presses down on it, hears the 'whoosh' of the message go through. 

Message received, but unanswered.

Just as before.

  
iii.  
  
He notices the music first. 

A _one-two-three_ , _one-two-three_ waltz meter, bells chiming in harmony between each measure, sparkling and light.

"Hmm." Akira opens his eyes. Blinks once. Twice.

Looks at his hands. Covered in a familiar set of red gloves. Touches his face. Feels the mask there.

The seat below him is moving, he notices. The pacing of it—swift without being unstable.

A horse? 

It's a deep jet-black, as if it was a piece of night fashioned and given form. Golden ribbons twine around its mane and tail, a set of golden reins leading up from the bit in its mouth to rest in Akira's gloved fingers.

He turns his head.

A carousel. Instead of the bold herd of colors that he expects, each and every steed circling with him alternates between coats with the same dark hue of his own or gleam a shining white, pale as milk and bright as snow.

The sky that he can see as the carousel spins round is a hazy blue, the gentle light of an early afternoon.

The setup—the horses, the shine of the water beneath the carousel, the silhouettes in the distance of the sky—feels very much like the amusement park of Dome Town, though Akira is aware that it isn't the same.

There are no crowds he can spot around on the grounds for one, or any other riders on the carousel.

"I don't think I remember this being quite so monochromatic, the last time I had seen it."

A voice from Akira's left, the words crisp and audible even over the jingling notes of music.

Akira amends his statement.

No other rider, but one.

"You had visited Dome City before?" Akira says.

Akechi on a white horse, on a farther, outer ring of the carousel. He dons an outfit to match. His old Robin Hood costume, faultless ivory and deep reds, winking with embellishments of glinting gold.

His red mask, however, is off his face. Dangles instead between the fingertips of his left hand.

"It was when I was very young," Akechi says. "Admission to the amusement park is free, after all. There weren't any rules about just _looking_ at the rides, though one is required to pay to ride them."

"Have you been back, since then?"

"No. Didn't have the chance. And besides," Akechi stares at his hand, watches his red mask disappear in blue flame, "nobody wants to go to an amusement park alone."

"Listen—" Akira untangles his hand from the reins of his carousel horse. Holds it out, adrift, floating, in the air. 

Another slinking line of flame, from the crown of Akechi's head down to his feet. His outfit changes, prince to trickster. Dark blacks and blues, and that sleek, sharp-edged helmet. Loki.

The look of the horse on which Akechi sits astride remains the same. Gold trimmings that seem to shine even brighter against the white of its head and neck and back. A mane swept back by the wind, ears laid flat and teeth bared in a scream.

White and black. 

Akira sees a line of horses charging, necks arched, heads proud, on a board.

Akechi rolls his shoulders, his eyes narrowing a little behind the red glass of his helmet. "No need to look so glum on my account, Akira. It simply is what it is. In the larger scheme of things, it's nothing more than a trifling matter."

"I would like to go." His horse rises up, going higher than Akechi's steed which remains stationary in its post. Akira lets his hand fall back to his side.

"Go where?"

"With you. To the amusement park."

The music plays on. 

_One-two-three, one-two-three_ — 

A short, shaky laugh. Dry and without amusement, its pitch nearly high enough to become mocking without quite getting there.

"You really do live up to your alias, Joker."

"It wasn't a joke." Oh. How interesting. His voice has narrowed, sharpened down to a fine point like the tips of one of his lockpicks. "Have you ever seen me do something that I didn't want to do myself?"

Another wash of blue flame. No Loki, no Black Mask now. Just Akechi's old student outfit. The pin-neat tie, the sharp brown jacket and dark pants of his school uniform. Black gloves, on both his hands.

Akira's horse continues to rise up, dip down. Circles around.

Something itches in his mind about circumferences. Zeno's paradox—the runner and the tortoise, doomed to run until they collapsed, never quite managing to close the distance between them. 

"What," Akechi says, with just a hint of a bite in his tone, "is with you and the sudden invitations?" He throws over a knee to face Akira, sitting sidesaddle on his white horse. "Has it gotten a bit too lonely for you out in the countryside?"

"Yeah. Sometimes."

At that, a certain light angles over Akechi's face—the line of his mouth, the pinch of his brow clouded, unreadable.

Don't get him wrong. A part of Akira is glad to see the familiar fields of rice and soybeans, to take in the greenery of the nearby forests and hike the short, familiar paths to view the waterfalls within them, to bike past the old post office that has stood in town for at least five centuries or more.

It doesn't mean he can't miss the city, miss the smell of coffee beans and curry spices. It doesn't mean he can't miss his friends—Futaba's energy, Ryuji's loud laughter, Ann's hard-earned optimism, Yusuke, Haru, Makoto and everyone else. It doesn't mean he can't miss— 

Akechi has been quiet. He's just—watching Akira, eyes unfaltering in their focus like that of a panther spying movement in tall grass, waiting to see if those footsteps belonged to those of a predator or prey. 

"What about you?" Akira says. "Aren't you going to answer me? If I asked you to go—"

" _Don't_ ," Akechi says, the word coming out as more of a hoarse exhale. He presses a hand over his eyes. Breathes in, slowly. 

The music of the carousel seems to sound fainter now, even more distant. Akechi peels away his hand, the movement slow, reluctant. 

The look on Akechi's face is reminiscent of the one Akira had seen that fateful February. Restrained dread, with a thread of resignation. Unshakable resolve. 

"We already have a promise," Akechi says. "We don't need to complicate it further until that one has been met." 

"Oh," Akira says. 

"I remember," Akira says.

He feels the fabric around him change, shift, disappear into the air. Akira looks at his hands. The gloves are gone, as is Joker's long coat. He's back in his usual outfit again outside of the school uniform—his white top and black blazer, dark jeans.

The steed beneath him is slowing down.

Akechi's gaze holds on to Akira's as the carousel circles, and circles, and circles.

Akira doesn't look away. Neither does Akechi.

The carousel stops.

Akechi leaps off his horse as the carousel goes still. Bows at the waist, in Akira's direction. With mockery or sincerity?

"Akechi—"

_I don't make promises I don't plan to keep._

_And neither do you._

A turn of his heel and without another word, Akechi walks on, the bright afternoon sun catching onto the ends of his hair, the shape of his back, as if in hope of holding him in place. He's gone.

After school, Akira finds letters addressed to him on the kitchen table. He gathers them to take them into his room to read. Morgana is napping contentedly on a splash of sunlight on his bed.

One letter is from Haru.

She writes of her experiences tending to flowers to display for her planned future cafe—sweet peas and hardy lavender—though it may take at least several more years after Akira graduates before everything else like location, safety permits, menus and so forth can be decided. Outside of her hospitality and business classes, Haru also mentions several meetings to labor groups in Tokyo that she had been attending with a few of her classmates. 

Takakura-san had also had held several back-and-forth meetings with her regarding the final reformation of Okumura Foods's employee policies, as well as restitution to the many workers who had been previously harmed under her father's leadership. The matter of the other companies that her father had ordered to be taken down were trickier. Takakura-san had grimaced when they had discussed it, saying he had been disappointed but not especially shocked by Mr. Okumura's actions; corporate espionage, poisonings, and even assassination were not unknown happenings in the high echelons of the business world, even before the Black Mask had shown on the scene.

_"I told you this before. I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive Akechi for taking my father's life before his time. That anger will always be there, I think. But...I can understand why he felt driven to do what he did. Not all the blame lies on his hands alone. If Father had known earlier that I had the same potential to take out our company's competitors, to get rid of them somehow—before I had met all of my precious friends—I truly don't know how I might have answered._

_Plants are simpler to take care of. People's hearts are more difficult. But all I can do now is hold my head high. Look after the things, and the people, who are most dear to me."_

Akira passes his fingertips over the pressed flowers Haru had attached at the end of her letter, a small sample from her flower garden. He'll need to remember to thank her in the chat later.

The other letter is Yusuke's. The envelope is just a little heavier than what he expected from first glance.

There's a letter inside of course, sentences of frenetic energy penned in expressive strokes. He tips the envelope further.

Cards spill out into his palm. 

Not calling cards, no. These are a little bigger. They look almost like the size of blank skill cards?

" _Forgive me,_ " Yusuke writes, " _for not including the whole set properly. I hadn't planned well enough to budget for a heavier package of such grandeur, so consider this the first taste of beautiful first act! A second one should arrive at a future time, perhaps once the stark grace of winter is kissed again by the pink lips of a blooming spring! I'm sure I can find time to finish painting and coloring them before then! Now if only Futaba would simply stop pestering me to add 'more sick lasers' to her Necronomicon—_ "

Akira flips one of the cards over. Then another. And another. It's them. The Phantom Thieves, on each one. Well, about half of them. Yusuke did say he was working on a part two for the rest of their members.

Akira's face in silhouette, in his Joker mask on one side. The other, his first Persona, Arsene, wings flared and hat tipped with an air of high drama.

This one.

Panther on one side, her mask in a sharp, fierce outline. Carmen on the other.

And this...

Two faces, on one side. Crow's Robin Hood mask, a curve of sickle-sharp red, facing the right. Directly under it, Crow in his Loki mask, profile facing the left.

He spins the card in hand. Both Robin Hood and Loki now, standing back to back.

Oh.

He drops his eyes back down to Yusuke's letter.

" _It would seem remiss to not include him, no matter our earlier disagreements. His presence had been invaluable after all, in the time when we needed every bit of courage and heart we could muster._

 _And from what you told us, he was the very first to come to your side when the rest of us could not. I've included two copies of Crow's cards in here—please do pass one on to him if you ever run into him._ " 

"Thanks Yusuke," Akira says softly, and tucks the cards safely away into his desk's drawer. As the drawer closes, he puts away thoughts of the waltz meter, chess, and carousel horses from his mind as well as he takes out study materials for exams from his bag. 

He'll see if can persuade Morgana to review with him later. He might take a walk in the evening too, to find new pictures of sights that he could send to his friends.  
  
  
iv.  
  
Akira opens his eyes. 

The plush blue of the Velvet Room ceiling doesn't greet him. Nor does he see the glitter of representational constellations, stars made of nothing more than projected light and human memory.

He tips back his head.

Sees an overlay of soft silver on whispery blue—some time in the early morning, before the sun had lingered long enough to drink up the scattered dew gifted from the night before.

Something brushes against his cheek. He reaches up.

Pull down a leaf, green and lush to the eye. 

He twirls it once in his hand. Releases it to let it drift to the ground.

He's standing on what looks like a lane in a park. Benches scatter along the sides of a stone-paved road, lined by grasses and patches of wildflowers. 

Trees arc together overhead, their branches and thick-hanging leaves providing shade and acting as a natural divider between the benches.

And standing by the bench a scant ten footsteps away is— 

_Someone that he had been longing to see._

"It's you," Akechi says. He's wearing a sweater this time—the green one he had, in that odd unreal world Maruki had cooked up.

Akira squints. 

Akechi looks—a little different. Shoulders more relaxed, maybe. His hair a little shorter at the ends. The intensity in his eyes is still as piercing as ever, but no longer with that ragged edge of rage that he had still carried during those months in that fake reality. 

Akira can still sense the anger, the conviction that always seemed to burn through Akechi's veins—but it's more of carefully-banked fire, a sheathed weapon now. Less of a keen-edged sword that had slashed its edge over and over and over against a stone wall, almost shattering itself to pieces.

Blood and rage and desperation. 

Akira still carries those things within himself as well, careful, so careful, to never let any of it drown him too deeply into despair. 

But if the scales did tip too far—he trusts his friends could pull him out of it. Present party included.

"Well?" Akechi says, sliding himself down onto the bench. "You don't need to just keep standing there, not when there's a perfectly serviceable seat here."

His impatience is still the same. Without quite meaning to, Akira feels a pull on the edge of his lips.

He sits.

"You know," Akira says, fiddling with the cuffs of his sleeves. "The rest of the Thieves are thinking about seeing me over the summer. It'll be harder to wrangle in Makoto's schedule and Haru's as well, since they're not students after graduating before us."

"Hm. Congratulations to them," Akechi says, albeit not very cheerfully. "You suppose this has any relevance to me because—?"

"Hey. It'd be nice." Akira leans forward, laces his hands together in front of him. "Look, my town is near a lot of historically significant stuff. Don't tell me that isn't the kind of thing you love to chatter on about to a captive audience."

"The audience being—"

"My friends. Or just me, if that's what you prefer."

"I don't think you've worked hard enough to convince me just yet," Akechi says.

"There's a road along my hometown's prefecture," Akira goes on, "that was once part of the Nakasendo, the paths that allowed travelers to go from Kyoto to Tokyo." His thumbnail flattens a crease on his jeans, drawing a line from his thigh to his knee. "If you don't want to visit," Akira says, "I could take that road and walk all the way to the city, if I knew you were there." 

Akechi smiles. It's not especially cordial. Neither is it especially acidic. "Really. Why would you go that far?" 

"Because I miss you," Akira says.

"Is that all?" Akechi says. A hand over his knee spasms, fingers clenching together once before relaxing again.

"Yeah. So, please." Akira tilts his head. "Hurry and come back to me when you can."

A sharp inhale. Something ripples across Akechi's face, too quick and too complicated for Akira to catch.

"If this is just a dream, then...this is fine, isn't it?" Akechi says, the phrasing pinging at something in Akira's mind. 

Akechi raises his hand. Fingertips on Akira's skin, the side of his jaw, turning him by his cheek and chin to face Akechi's gaze.  
  
All sounds fall away, except for the rustling of the wind through the leaves above them. The rise and fall of Akechi's breath.

The pounding in Akira's chest.

Akira's never really had a good habit of thinking things through before doing what he wants.

So. 

He closes the distance.

The fabric of Akechi's shirt under his hands. Heat and sweetness, where their mouths meet. The faint taste of salt and something heavier beneath that, like coffee.

Akira knows how to distinguish between almost twenty types of coffee beans by touch and taste alone. It's not something that he can easily forget, not after all the practice he had with them at Leblanc.

He won't forget this either. 

Akechi's hand around his neck, fingers just tugging lightly at the ends of his hair. The taste of him.

Even if it was just—even it was just a dream.

Akechi pulls away a little first, though he stays close.

Akira lets go of him, drops his hands from Akechi's shirt to his own knees.

Akechi's collar is wrinkled. His eyes a little wider than they normally are, the light in them burning bright as candleflame. "Ah," he says. Laughs, the sound of it a little wry, a little rough. "Perhaps the fault for this is mine. My own mind is really too cruel."

Something about that wording is curious.

"Wait—" Akira says. 

"What—" Akira says.

Akira wakes.

His first thought:

I just kissed Akechi.

I dreamed about kissing him? Or did he kiss me?  
  
Was it just—

Oh. _Shit._

  
v. 

Akira opens his eyes.

No school today. No parents at home.

He washes up, dresses, and winds his way into the kitchen to check the fridge, makes a quick breakfast for himself.

If he likes, he might walk further off the town streets into the woods today. Maybe head out to one of the nearby mountains, cool himself down in the groves of towering trees and small streams instead of struggling with the old fan in his room.

A knock on the door.

Akira stops what he's doing. Listens.

Another knock, and another, more decisive this time.

The summer sunlight is bright, almost blinding when Akira pulls back the door.

He freezes at the threshold. 

"Hi," Akechi says in front of him, casual as you please. 

His clothes are cut a little different than the ones Akira has seen before—a light coat, the same rich tan as the peacoat he had worn before, over a v-neck shirt in a deep blue. Dark slacks and dark shoes. A rolling luggage sits upright on the ground besides him.

On his hands is one black glove. Only on his right hand.

Akira's nails prick into both his palms. 

Is this—? 

He can't still be asleep, can't he?

" _Sheesh_ , what's the hold up?" a voice yowls, somewhere around Akira's heels. Morgana bumps his head against Akira's ankle, and peeps around him. "Oh. It's just Akechi, huh." One his ears flicks forward. "Mmkay, I'll let you two catch up. Leave a window open for me so I can come back inside when I'm done exploring."

With that, Morgana leaps past Akira's foot. Jumps up onto a wall bordering his family's house, and trots off.

Morgana can see him too.

It's him.

It's him. 

It's undeniably him.

"I'm here," Akechi Goro says. He's looking a little to the side, almost like he's too embarrassed to look directly at Akira. "I got your messages too." He shifts on his feet, seems to steel himself and tips his head back, lifting brown eyes to Akira's gray. "Well? Show me around. You promised to, didn't you?"

"Yeah," Akira says. Steps out of the door, takes one, two, three steps towards Akechi, one of his hands reaching out towards him. "Yeah, I did."

**Author's Note:**

> \+ title is [a music term](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irregular_resolution), even though jazz doesn't show up here in a single line. amazing.  
> +Not specifically mentioned, but the hometown for akira here is based on [Nagiso in the Nagano Prefecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagiso,_Nagano); the prefecture is only about 2-3 hours away from Tokyo by train, has a lot of old buildings/historical significance, and is also famous for a lot of mountains, waterfalls, and hot springs.  
> +[red thread of fate, et cetera, sometimes the girl in question gets a scar on her back, some variations has it on her forehead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_thread_of_fate)  
> +one passing allusion made to [the mr. fox fairytale](https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/efft/efft04.htm)  
> +what was akechi doing all this time? idk dude, he didn't want to tell me anyThing about what he was up to, he's sneaky like that
> 
> +so were the dream dates real??? the readers wail. 
> 
> heck yeah they were babey, wildcard dream bonds go! which is absolutely useless for anything but long distance pining as an extreme sport :3


End file.
